


Life is a broken-winged bird

by snowynight



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon, Psychological Trauma, Tarsus IV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 11:58:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5163020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowynight/pseuds/snowynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into how the event on Tarsus IV shapes Jim</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life is a broken-winged bird

From a very young age Jim has been a popular kid. Couldn't stay still long enough. Always get into trouble, just have to climb the tallest tree or sledding downhill with both arms in air or other mischief. But what a nice smile! Have a right word for everyone. You can't help but smiled at him. Teachers and neighbours sigh but talk fondly about the younger Kirk's kid, speculating how many hearts he'll break when he grew up and joke that they have to lock their kids up to keep them safe from Jim's charm.

Jim doesn't quite know how people can be content in one place. The world outside is laughing, tempting and inviting him to join in the fun. Can't you see how I am waiting for you? it asks. Come to me! Jim's legs respond faster than his brain, landing him often in trouble, but he just can't stay still.

As much as Jim likes to explore, he likes people too, People are interesting, fascinating even, a word he learnt from an old-fashioned paper made book. The timid old baker was once a notorious boxer. His loved nursery teacher has once lived in the wild as a hermit for several years just because she could. Jim likes to be around people, and a little bird in his ears tells him to notice when Aiko falls on the ground and tried to swallow her tears, Miss Kowalski is in a good mood to give extra candy, and sometimes singing a certain song around the grumpy caretaker will make her smile. When he hears of taking a holiday off Earth, he is so happy. To go into the stars and see more people, probably different from those at his home and interesting in different way? Sign him up!

When he looks back into his days in Tarsus IV, which he tries not to do often, he can remember the thrill of seeing the first alien, the secret language he comes up with his several friends and the clever word play they think up, the sky, more lilac than that in Iowa. Until the hunger. Kodos. The execution speech. People being shot down and buried, dropping like a loose sac. No more lives. Fear and rage bombard him, his only guide to lead him to the escape, the hiding, trying to wrestle lives under his charge from death and failing. He lies down carrying each of them in his heart, and wakes up surviving, caring for them yet calculating their strength, their weakness and their hope to keep everyone through. He make stupid mistakes, him and others paying a way too high price, draws blood, breaks hearts and arms and mends not enough wounds. _Curious_ , he thinks, _why can I always hear dead weight metal chains clanking_?

The first night he is back home he hugs himself so tight that his arms hurt. He no longer hears the welcome in the air, in people. Befitting, he though, _thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand_.

It is hard to relearn Iowa. Tarsus IV teaches him to be still, alert and shoulder his life and others. Iowa tells him that he should be a kid, to behave like a kid. One cannot have two masters. Iowa and Tarsus IV are tearing him apart, and he drowns himself in books. Reading, hungering, devouring. Words are patient. Words don't demand immediate reactions. Words know when to stop asking questions. Words won't die if he read one wrong. Words are safe.

The day before he enters Starfleet Academy, he goes to an antique shop and finds an old paper daily planner. He flips and sees a poem in cursive handwriting:

“Hold fast to dreams,  
For if dreams die  
Life is a broken-winged bird,  
That cannot fly.”  
-Langston Hughes

He buys the planner. It stays with him throughout the academy. Loses it after Farragut. By then he is so used to flying, with wings only held together with makeshift dream that he forgets how not to fly.


End file.
